Monday, July 21, 2014

Child Free!

Yesterday I made the hour long drive to my sister's house to drop my kids off with her for a few days. Four days actually. We get them back on Thursday. I was really happy when Cheryl asked if she could take them for a few days this summer. Because although we have had many good days all together this summer, we have also had a few days where I wasn't sure we were all going to live to see the next day. And I just needed a break. Just a little one.

So I left them happy with my sister and began the drive back to Buda. I had visions in my head of stopping to get something to eat and then going home to read. Because that is my idea of fun. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes into the drive home my car started blowing warm, humid air out of the AC instead of nice, cold air. Let me tell you something. You do not want to be driving around in central Texas in the summertime with warm, humid air blowing in your face. So I did what I always do when the car is acting up and called Mike. He told me to pull over and let the car cool down for awhile. Well. Just as I was exiting the interstate the power steering decided to go out too. I think it is super fun to try to steer a big, metal box off the highway with just the sheer force of my muscles. Anyhow. I managed to pull into a KFC and stayed inside people watching while I waited for Mike to get someone to come and cover him at work so he could come out and rescue me. Then we called a tow truck to come pick up the Jeep and that's when I realized that I hadn't left the kids car seats at my sister's house for her to use while they were there. So we drove back to her house to drop them off and ended up getting home around 9:15 last night. Good times.

Hopefully, the car will be fixed and ready to drive tonight. But that still put a bit of a wrench in the plans I had for my free time this week. So instead of waking up and heading out for coffee with a friend this morning and then lunch with a friend this afternoon followed by actual shopping stress free I had to make other plans for my day.

I started off by waking up at 5:30am when Mike left for work and I just could not get back to sleep. So I got up, made my coffee and wandered aimlessly around the house for awhile until Good Morning America came on. Then I took the dogs for a long walk. Then I came home and did some more aimless wandering with a little bit of talking out loud to myself thrown in for good measure. Then I decided to go pick some tomatoes in the garden. While out in the backyard I heard a rustling noise from the corner of our flower bed. That is never good. Turned out to be the neighborhood cat, Edwin or as Emma likes to call him "Eggwin", out there messing around. He climbed over our fence when he realized I had spotted him and that was that. Until five minutes later when I went to the front yard looking for our sprinkler and I saw Edwin out in the middle of the street playing with a rodent. And I mean this was either a very large field mouse or a small rat. So I stood out there watching for a minute and yelled at Edwin to leave the poor thing alone. But of course cats never listen. Then all of a sudden that big mouse looked at me. Straight at me. We made eye contact. And before I knew it, he had made a beeline running toward me like a missile that has locked onto its target. I guess he thought I was going to provide safe harbor. But instead I screamed and ran inside and slammed the front door. Then I spent the next half hour watching out the window as Edwin stalked this creature through our front flower bed. He never did catch it. He finally gave up and left. Says a little something about his character doesn't it? Secretly, I'm glad he didn't kill the rodent of unusual size but I really hope it doesn't decide to live in our flower bed forever. Or our house. I really hope it doesn't get into the house.

Well. After all that excitement I decided to do a little stress cleaning. I wandered through all of the rooms of our house to see which room stressed me out the most. Turned out to be Jake's room. Hands down. When I tell Jake to clean his room I always have to clarify with him what that entails. Every. Single. Time. I tell him make up your bed. He doesn't even sleep under his covers for this very reason so this should be a fairly simple task. Then I tell him put your toys away in the correct boxes and get everything off of your floor. I don't want to see anything on your floor. What I think Jake actually gets out of these conversations is, okay, she doesn't want to SEE anything on the floor so I will shove everything under the bed or my dresser. And I can't remember which toys go in which box even though she has explained it to me over and over so I will just stuff anything that doesn't fit under the bed behind my toys boxes and then cram the boxes on the shelf and then I can go play. The boy is a mess. Here's the proof.

Could someone please buy this child some stuffed animals or super hero action figures? I am not kidding that it took me two solid hours to get this child's room clean. I found approximately 300 Lego pieces under his dresser, rocks of various sizes and colors, a necklace made of dried out macaroni, 5 empty gallon size Ziploc bags labeled with things like Jake's Ninja turtle stuff, 9 paper airplanes because you can never have too many of those, enough dirty socks to explain the odor in that room and I kid you not a toy box that had about a quarter inch of standing vinegar in it. Yes, you read that right. Vinegar. On the loose in a box. I've tried to come up with a scenario in which that should have happened but I have not been able to.

I also threw away (gasp!) a few (boxful of) toys and enough papers to fuel a large campfire. The kid keeps everything. I felt a little bad throwing away all of the bucket list papers his friends gave him last year that said what a neat friend he is but I mean they were a fire hazard. And they had to go. I know I could have spread them all out, taken a picture of them and then had that turned into a framed canvas for him to put on his wall to remember all of that stuff by but does that really sound like me? I didn't think so either. So it's gone. And I feel better and less stressed about the house. Tomorrow I'm thinking about tackling Emma Mae's room and possibly the hall closet. Unless I get my car back in which case I am totally going to meet a friend for coffee and then lunch and then go sit in a nice air conditioned movie theater. All. By. Myself.

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I used to be a Marine Biologist. Well, sort of. I taught Marine Biology and worked on a boat educating the public about all things oceanic. I'm now married to my best friend and we are blessed with an adorable little boy and baby girl. These are our life and times (with a few random thoughts thrown in).